The Mariner

by Ade Grant

  Remaining stoic against Harris’ platitudes, he kept a hand on his holstered Mauser.

  “And don’t touch that thing, or we might all get killed!”

  Five men wearing different attire, though acting as a well-trained unit, climbed up the rope ladder and gathered on deck, each one pointing a handgun at the motley crew.

  “Identify yourselves immediately,” said one appearing to be in charge.

  “Barnett, it’s me!” Harris nodded enthusiastically. “You can stand down.”

  “Captain Harris?” Barnett was shocked, but didn’t lower his weapon, instead he glowered at the Neptune’s crew. “But this isn’t the Kraken. Who are these people? What happened to your command?”

  “We were overcome by Anomenemies. I was forced to abandon the Kraken and commandeer this vessel instead. This is Captain Arthur Philip of the Neptune, and these are his people. They seek our protection.”

  “What’s that?!” Barnett suddenly swooped his gun low to point at the ground. His lackeys did likewise, some dropping to their knees to facilitate their aim.

  “It’s an Anomenemy, sir!”

  “Permission to shoot?”

  “No it’s not!” Grace yelled. “His name’s Percy!” With a defiance she stepped in front of the tazzy devil, who, like a deer caught in headlights, halted under the glare of attention and nervously farted.

  “What manner of creature is it?”

  “It’s a Tasmanian Devil you idiot.” McConnell shook his head, irritated.

  Barnett swung his attention from beast to reverend, a scowl across his wide thuggish brow. “We have to be careful out here. We are fighting for the very future of the human race. If an Anomenemy made it past our defences, all could be lost. We’re trying to save the fucking world.”

  “It’s true, I promise,” said Harris. “Wait until you meet Mavis, then you’ll understand.”

  Barnett studied each of the passengers, running every suspect though some internal test, the parameters known only to him.

  “How long have you known these people, captain?”

  “Just a couple of days, but they’re fine. I can vouch for them.”

  “Very well, drop anchor here, you will not be permitted to approach the fleet any further. We shall take you to the Beagle via the speedboat. No weapons. No dogs. Understand?”

  All agreed, some more reluctantly than others. McConnell and the Mariner proved the most suspicious, though raging hunger drove them to submission.

  “Very well,” the Mariner relented, starving and powerless to refuse.

  Their approach to the Beagle was one of shadow and awe. The mighty ship loomed above, blotting out all sunlight, and suddenly the sea spray took a chill quality. There was no direct access to the Beagle from the sea surface, instead the crew of the Neptune were forced to board a satellite ship, a converted fishing trawler, and then cross onto the Beagle via a temporary gangway, watched the whole time by suspicious gun barrels and makeshift pikes.

  “Not quite the welcome you lead us to believe,” the Mariner spoke with a tone brimming with threat.

  “It’s all just show, don’t worry,” Harris once again tried to placate his guests “It’s all routine. If it makes them feel safer, why not? No-one’s going to get harmed.”

  The immediate striking difference between the Neptune and the Beagle, was that the ferry was metal throughout. Every footfall upon her echoed back to their ears and it felt to the Mariner as if he’d been shrunk to the size of a bullet, rattling around in the barrel of a gun. Grimy white walls felt stark and impersonal, further emphasised as they entered her gut, an area behind the mouth he’d been so alarmed by. The cavernous chamber was crammed with goods and supplies, a horde teeming with a crew, each man and woman sorting and cataloguing.

  “The rewards of hunting Anomenemies,” Harris said, indicating the plenty. “Sometimes traders give us a cut for the protection we provide, other times they are simply the spoils of war.”

  The Mariner was gob-smacked. “Is all this food?”

  “No, not all. See those bags over there? Coal. We got some barrels of petrol as well somewhere. Guns are what we’re after most, but there’s never enough of those. Our teams usually have to share, think World-War-Russia and you got the right idea.”

  Despite the activity, the cargo room was dimly lit, lights some thirty feet in the air emitting a low orange glow, bestowing little but shadows on the workers below. The crew had supplemented the luminosity with their own oil lamps and battery powered torches that created little pools of light amongst the crates.

  “Whilst some supplies are plentiful, fuel for the Beagle is low,” Harris explained. “In fact the ship hasn’t moved for some months now, engine on emergency power only.”

  “You didn’t mention anything about this before,” the Mariner said. “I thought she was well travelled?”

  “We are!” Harris’ defences shot up, a brief flash of anger at being doubted crossing his features. “Just because the Beagle doesn’t sail any-more doesn’t mean that her eyes don’t roam. My Kraken has seen many sights, I can assure you.” He strode ahead, pulling open a heavyset door that led into a tight corridor. “Follow.”

  As they were marched ever more centrally, they passed further members of the Beagle’s crew, and unlike when they’d arrived at the zoo, these were uninterested in visitors, concerned only with their own tasks. Countless blank faces bathed in a dim light.

  “It’s like being back in a city,” McConnell said, his voice carefully quiet yet still echoing. “It’s been a long time since I’ve felt a part of a multitude. Strangely comforting in its way.”

  The Mariner received no similar comfort. He couldn’t help but feel that they were once more captives; Harris another Pryce leading him to Mavis. most likely a tin-pot dictator like Diane, another fraud and monster.

  At least this monster might have some spare wine.

  “Stay here,” a gruff escort commanded, pointing his gun at the Neptune’s crew. While they obediently waited, Harris was shepherded through a set of doors, still no warmer in construction then the metallic ones they’d touched before.

  The Mariner turned to speak with McConnell, keeping his voice no more than a whisper.

  “What do you think of our chances of seeing him again?”

  “You’ve got to trust someone.”

  “What evidence do you have for this?”

  “If they were going to kill us, they’d have done so by now.”

  The Mariner raised his eyebrows. “You’ve lived a sheltered life, reverend. People are far sicker than you’d believe.”

  Finally the door opened and a guard beckoned them through.

  The room beyond was as dimly lit as the rest of the ship, though the multitude of desks inside were scattered with lamps, their shades directing beams onto notebooks, papers, beakers and microscopes. It gave the impression of a thin strip of light, horizontally arranged with darkness above and below. Between them he could see a waistline moving back and forth in a shuffle.

  “Come in, come in,” he heard an ancient voice whisper. Each of them stepped through, the guards departing and closing the door behind.

  As the Mariner’s eyes adjusted to the differences in light, a wizened face swam from the gloom. Mavis was small, no more than a sack of bones with a smiley face slapped on top. The light bounced off her pearly dentures, and with the skin so tight about her skull, she gave the impression of a skeleton rising from the dark. He didn’t flinch though; her eyes were warm and welcoming. If she were a skeleton she was a noble one.

  “Ma’am, it is my duty to introduce to you-”

  “Enough Harris,” she silenced him with a wave of a stick-thin arm. “Let them speak for themselves, I won’t abide by all that pomposity here.” She reached the Mariner and took his hand, staring up at his face. Close up he found she had a vaguely medicinal smell and the thinness of her hair only added to the feeling he conversed with a corpse. “I hope he hasn’t been like that sin
ce he found you?” she giggled, though the sound was dry as a bag of chalk. “I keep telling him to relax, but whenever he’s in here it’s all ma’am this and official report that. Stomping about as if he were in the army! Still, I’m grateful, he’s a good boy.” Harris didn’t respond, but his stature swelled with pride at her praise. “Where did he find you?”

  “Actually,” the Mariner said, looking into her warm eyes. “We found him.”

  Harris coughed nervously. “I regret to inform you we have lost the Kraken, along with the Anomenemy we retrieved from ‘Island 227’. I was forced to abandon ship when my crew succumbed to a madness.”

  “You lost the whole crew?” The voice from the back of the room took the Mariner by surprise. He hadn’t thought there were any others but Mavis and Harris, but now he noticed a third reclining in a corner. She was smartly presented, as Harris would have been were it not for his night in the ocean, a soaking permanently altering his suit for the worse. She was young, long blond hair swept back behind her ears, jaw firmly set and eyes cool and unblinking. “How could you lose the ship, lose the crew and yet survive yourself?”

  Harris was clearly irritated by the woman’s question. “I don’t know how it happened. One minute everyone was fine, the next: total madness. Terrible, violent madness. I believe it to be a form of zombification.”

  “Then it’s spreading,” Mavis sighed. “We need to do better. Did your crew have much contact with the Anomenemy you captured, Harris?”

  “As a matter of fact, ma’am, some did. She was quite talkative, kept entertaining the crew with stories of their past. Silly unsubstantiated stuff, though they seemed quite taken by it.”

  “Then it is as I feared: contagion. We are not eradicating this disease fast enough, it’s spreading and if we’re careless it will consume us all.”

  Mavis seemed weak with the effort of speaking, her voice fragile and tired, and her hand still holding onto the Mariner’s as if afraid to fall. It struck him that this woman chosen as leader was utterly unsuited to the task. Surely a rival would simply have to give a light push to perform a coup d’état? How could someone so vulnerable maintain control over so vast a clan?

  “So the Kraken is lost,” the woman in the shadows continued, unwilling to let the matter slide. “And yet, you’re alive Harris? Did you feel that going down with the ship was beyond you?”

  Harris’ face was sour. “I think you’ll find that the ship hasn’t sunk, it has merely run aground!”

  The Mariner sensed a rivalry between the pair, and moved quickly to diffuse any feud. “The Kraken drifted into an island we were inhabiting. I can confirm the crew had become Mindless.”

  “Mindless?”

  “Yes, er.. Zombies.”

  Mavis patiently nodded. “You mean ‘Anomenemies’?”

  “I do not know the meaning of the word.”

  Mavis grinned at the Mariner’s caution. “Who are you, young man? And speak clearly, my ears are not what they were. They deteriorate day by day. I used to dread the idea of reliance upon a hearing-aid, but now I would gladly kill for one.”

  The Mariner spoke slowly. “My name is Arthur Philip, Captain of the Neptune. We were forced to flee the island we were living upon when it became inhabited by these Anomenemies. A short time later we found Harris in the water and brought him here.”

  “Looking for a reward, no doubt?”

  “Food, drink, a bit of information.”

  “Of course. Harris, take his crew to the dining quarters and see that they are well fed. Captain Philip will stay here and talk with me.”

  “Certainly, Ma’am.” Harris bowed and escorted the crew away. If any were keen to stay and hear the conversation, their hunger overruled the desire. Grace showed some reluctance, but a nod from the Mariner and a gentle nudge from McConnell coaxed her along.

  “Is there anything you need in the immediate?” Mavis asked as they departed.

  “A drink wouldn’t go amiss.”

  “Water?”

  “Whiskey.”

  She chuckled again, dropping his hand and moving away, making a yard look like a mile. “Of course. Heidi, do me a favour and get us a couple of drinks, will you?”

  Harris’ rival reluctantly left to retrieve the spirit, leaving the two alone.

  “Have you ever heard of Richard Darwins?”

  The Mariner admitted that no, he had not.

  “He was a scientist. Perhaps the greatest that ever lived, one whom the likes of myself can only aspire to emulate. He was a pioneer of atheism, the rejection of the supernatural, illogical, unquestioning fallacies of the masses. But he was more than that, he influenced the whole course of civilisation when he discovered a process called evolution. This discovery was found on a voyage, similar to the one we are on, on a ship after which this one was named. And it is through his discovery that we will undo the damage wrought upon us.

  “You see, the world used to make sense. Throughout mankind’s history, we have been shrouded in mysticism and ignorance, but finally, through rational thought and perseverance, science managed to conquer. By the beginning of the twenty-first century our world was held together by a set of rules, discovered and confirmed by scientists. For the first time in our history, we truly understood how things worked. I’m sure you remember.”

  The Mariner kept quiet, not wanting to explain that he remembered nothing of the old world. Well, almost nothing.

  “But then things changed. The centre did not hold, everything fell apart. The cause? I don’t know, no-one does, but nonetheless we find ourselves in a world no longer made of rules, but dominated by questions.” She leaned forward, stressing the subsequent point. “And inhabited by things that simply shouldn’t exist.”

  The Mariner nodded, this much was true, it was what he’d heard time and time again from those who claimed to compare the two eras.

  “These things do not obey our world’s history. They do not fit in with the rules we discovered. They are anomalies, and they are our enemies too. The presence of such creatures further weakens and undermines the rules we need in order to restore our lives. Every last one must be hunted down and eradicated.”

  “Are these the trials I’ve heard about?”

  Mavis turned and retreated to the back of the room. “Come, I have something to show you.”

  She led him through a door, proving the room they were in was merely an antechamber to one much larger. Unlike the previous one, this was bathed in an even blue light that seemed determined to eradicate even the smallest shadow. There was little in the way of furniture, just a single chair and a gurney. A figure was strapped into each. Both were dead.

  “This man was accused of being an Anomenemy,” Mavis said, standing beside the corpse in the gurney. It was that of an adult male, middle-aged, his head balding and flabby round the waist. The old lady ran her fingers across his skin, pale in death but stained with dark bruises, most located around the arms, still strapped tight. “Anomenemies come in many forms, captain. Some are clearly monsters, other are like you and I. Those that mask themselves thus must be tested. With science.”

  “And the other?” he asked, gesturing towards the body in the chair, another man, some years younger than the first.

  Mavis didn’t answer, but chose to continue her train of thought. “Richard Darwins discovered the history of our species: that life evolves. We came from the monkeys who came from rats who came from fish. Every animal is related to the other, slight changes with every child born separating one strain from the last. Different species united in the annuls of time. United in the blood, captain. In the blood.

  “How can you tell if a creature is not of our world? If it does not obey the laws of science? Why, you look in its blood of course, to see if evolution can be found there.”

  Mavis nodded towards the corpse in the chair, disappointment crossing her face like a teacher referring to a particularly stupid pupil. “A pirate, a thief and a murderer. No-one to feel pity for, but useful
for our test, because as loathsome as he was, he was one of us. He was a being born of evolution, his blood the same family as mine and of yours, just like every other creature from the old-world. All branches from the same tree.

  “Anomenemies are not of our family. They do not obey the rules. They have different blood and when it is mixed with ours the effects are... lethal. That’s what we did here. A simple transfusion from the subject to the pirate. If the pirate dies we know we have an Anomenemy, and deal with it accordingly.”

  “You kill them?”

  “You think we killed an innocent man? No, there were countless reports he was a practising witch. All such evils must be put to death. For science.”

  She patted the dead ‘Anomenemy’ tenderly and the Mariner shivered. Despite her frailty he was starting the understand the danger of the old woman, the ease she surrounded herself in the macabre. How easy was it to end up on her gurney, the blood from your arm flowing into that of an equally doomed captive?

  “How do you know evolved blood can mix? How do you know you are right?”

  “I’ve told you. Science. I’m not some witch-doctor, or quack. I’ve tested my theorem thoroughly. Every time we bring in a prisoner I give them a little of my blood first, and they always take it without harm. We’re entirely logical here, captain.” Finished, she fixed him with a look that reminded him of Diane, or perhaps Tetrazzini.

  Suddenly the door behind him opened, causing the Mariner to jump, but it was only the blond woman from before, returning from her errand, and the Mariner found a glass pushed into his hand. It contained an amber liquid that pleasingly turned out to be a pungent scotch. Unable to hold back he gulped it down. Momentarily lost in his dependency, the Mariner closed his eyes, concentrating on the warmth that flowed down his throat and the, not wholly unpleasant, ache in his stomach. It was a welcome heat after the chill of Mavis’ teachings.

  “Captain, I’d like to introduce you to Heidi. Between her and Harris the whole operation we have here is held together.”